The Promise and Perils of Biofuelsi

The Promise and Perils of Biofuelsi John Ikerdii The world is running out of cheap fossil energy and biofuels are being touted as America's fuels of the future. Some dismiss the current energy crunch as nothing more than another short run phenomenon, arguing that we have used but a small fraction of the earth's total fossil energy reserves. While there is truth to this argument, it masks far more than it reveals. Most of the remaining reserves of oil and natural gas are buried deep beneath ocean floors or in other places very difficult to find and to reach. The remaining reserves of coal likewise will be very costly to mine and to burn, particularly without seriously degrading the environment. The industrial era of the past 200-years has been fueled by cheap energy, first by wood from abundant forests and then by fossil energy from easily accessible sources. But the days of old-growth forests, oil gushers, surface veins of coal are gone. There are simply no sources of cheap energy left to support continued industrial development. Rising energy costs will fundamentally transform our economy and our society. The basic nature of the problem is perhaps most clear in the concept of peak oil.1 Petroleum geologists observed several decades ago that peaks in production from specific oil fields typically occurred when approximately half of the recoverable oil in a field had been extracted. After the peak, production continued but only at a diminishing rate. Historically, the time lag between discovery and peak production has averaged about 30-40 years. It takes time to get started drilling and to drill a sufficient number of wells to reach peak production. Beyond the peak, production continues, but the older wells yield less oil, and as residual reserves decline, new wells typically are deeper, more costly, and less productive. U.S. oil discoveries peaked in Oklahoma and Texas in the late 1930s and early 1940s. U.S. petroleum production peaked in 1971, and has been declining ever since.2 The new oil fields in Alaska caused but a temporary “blip” in a persistent downtrend. In spite of rhetoric to the contrary, the United States has been powerless to reduce its dependence on foreign oil. The peak in global oil discoveries occurred in 1962, indicating a peak in global production sometime in the early 2000s. Experts disagree about when the peak will actually occur, with estimates ranging from as late as 2025 to as early as 2005. Global production has been essentially flat since 2005, in spite of record oil prices, so the peak may have already occurred. Even the major oil companies, such as BP, Exxon-Mobile, and Chevron-Texaco, have begun to focus their attention on energy alternatives for the future. The experts generally agree that we have not come close to depleting the earth's petroleum reserves. In fact, we have only used about one-fourth of the earth's total reserves, since about half of total is not considered to be recoverable. The problem is that recovery costs will continue to i Prepared for presentation at the “Agricultural Professionals' Breakfast” at the Kankakee County Fair, Kankakee, IL, August 2, 2007. ii John Ikerd is Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO – USA; author of, Sustainable Capitalism, http://www.kpbooks.com , and A Return to Common Sense, http://www.rtedwards.com/books/171/ , Email: [email protected] ; website: http://faculty.missouri.edu/ikerdj/. 1 increase and production will continue to decline for as long as we continue to use oil. Even if new technologies are found to recover more of total reserves, the remaining flow of oil from now on seems destined to be far slower and more costly than in the past. The inevitability of increasing costs of energy can be seen most clearly in the relative amounts of “old energy” required to extract “new energy” from various alternative sources. Energy is required to drill, mine, extract, crush, distill, refine, and carry out all of the other processes necessary to turn “potential energy” into “usable energy.” Regardless of today's relative dollar and cent costs, alternative energy sources that require more “old energy” to create “new energy” ultimately will be more costly. Oil produced in the U.S. during the 1940s yielded more than 100 kcals of energy for each kcal of energy used in extraction, a net energy ratio of over 100-to-one.3 By the 1970s, with deeper, less productive wells, the ratio had dropped to 23-to-one. Today's production from 1970s discoveries yields about 10 kcals of “new energy” for each kcal of “old energy.” And the efficiency ratios are even lower for newer discoveries. Falling net energy ratios and rising energy costs have now made alternative sources of petroleum competitive with current production. For example, oil from tar sands in Alberta Canada are currently being brought into production, in spite on net energy ratios of less than 8-to-one. Liquefied coal and oil shale also have net energy ratios in the 8-to-one range. All non-petroleum sources of fossil energy face futures very similar in nature to petroleum. Natural gas supplies may be the next to peak after oil, as it is a good substitute for oil in many uses. If coal is used to replace the shortfalls in oil and natural gas, the energy obtained by extracting oil from the coal might well be less than the energy required to mine the coal within 50 years, even if we don't run out. The world isn't running out of fossil energy, at least not yet, but it is running out of cheap fossil energy. With global population projected to double within the next fifty years and with booming industrial economies in China and India, dramatically rising energy prices almost certainly will be required to ration the dwindling fossil energy reserves. Development of renewable energy will not prevent continued high and rising energy costs over the next century. All of the renewable alternatives to fossil energy – nuclear, wind, water, photovoltaic – will be less abundant and more costly than today's fossil energy, in terms of net energy produced and dollar and cent costs. Net energy ratios for most renewable energy sources range between 6-to-one to 8-to-one, still below current ratios for most petroleum and natural gas. Cheap and abundant energy has shaped the past two hundred years of human society. The next two hundred years will be shaped by the scarcity and high cost of energy. The current “oil boom” in rural America, particularly in the Midwest, is a direct result of the end of cheap energy. To many people, biofuels seem to be an answer, if not the answer, to America's growing dependence on fossil energy, particularly oil imports from the Middle East. Only the most naïve believe that the full cost of U.S. dependence on foreign oil is fully reflected in prices at the gas pumps. With the growing economic and human costs of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East – the only major oil-producing region that has not yet peaked – politicians have been quick to support anything that might reduce our reliance on imported oil. 2 Ethanol and biodiesel can be produced domestically from renewable sources and present fewer environmental risks that do most alternative sources of liquid energy. Biofuels are also touted by politicians and government officials as a promising source of employment and economic development for chronically depressed rural communities. On the surface, biofuels appear to be good for everyone. So with government subsidies and protective tariffs of a dollar a gallon or more, ethanol plants have begun to spring up all across rural America. In early 2006, the Renewable Fuels Association reported 95 ethanol plants already in operation – 46 farmer-owned – capable of producing four billion gallons of ethanol a year, with another 31 plants under construction.4 USDA estimated that ethanol claimed 18% of the 2005 U.S. corn crop and has risen to claim about one-third of the corn crop by 2006. By the end of 2006, The Earth Policy Institute (EPI) identified 116 plants in production, with 79 additional plants under construction.5 Based on plans already in place, ethanol could claim more than half of the U.S. corn crop by 2008. An agricultural “oil boom” clearly is under way. But are biofuels really the answer, or even an answer, to the most important questions of high cost energy? Admittedly, ethanol and biodiesel are alternative sources of liquid energy – the type of energy currently in shortest supply. If biofuels were simply promoted as such, there might be nothing deceptive or misleading about their growing popularity or political support. However, biofuels are being promoted as the key to energy independence while in fact ethanol and biodiesel can never significantly reduce U.S. reliance on imported oil. And perhaps most important, biofuels are not a sustainable source of either renewable energy or rural economic development. It's easy to understand why American farmers are willing to accept all of the government subsidies for bioenergy production. Other businesses are being heavily subsidized by government, so why not farming? But neither biofuels nor government subsidies offer realistic solutions to our growing foreign energy dependence or to the chronic economic crisis in rural America. The ultimate potential for biofuels is clearly quite limited. Some people, such as David Pimentel of Cornell University, have been studying ethanol and biodiesel intensively since the energy crisis of the 1970s. 6 He and others estimate that if all of the solar energy collected by all of the green plants in the U.S.

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